Chapter 18

W olf trots down the long hallway, head low, eyes forward, nose sniffing and scenting. He pauses at intersections, scenting this way and that, and then chooses a direction, and we all follow, knowing his animal senses are infinitely keener than even our immortal ones.

We make it down several levels before we encounter resistance in the form of a mixed group of warriors. They're bunched in the middle of an intersection, and they stink of fear. One of them levels a hastaxi in our direction, and I can feel Wolf about to pounce.

I step forward and knot my fingers in the thick soft fur at his shoulders. "Wait," I murmur. "Let me try a different approach to slaughter. If it seems like one of them is about to attack, do what you do. But let me try this first, okay?"

He gives a low soft rumble of agreement, leaning against my thigh and licking a trickle of blood off my belly.

I step away from Wolf into the open space between our two groups. My mind is blank, all the words suddenly dried up, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. For a moment, all I want is to run away with Caleb and Caspian, hide away in some forest far from anyone and anything and not be responsible for all of this.

But I can't.

The fate of the world, the future of all immortals, and the future of human civilization itself all seem to hang in the balance—resting on my nineteen-year-old shoulders.

It's too fucking much for any one person, and it's not fucking fair.

There we go: anger seems to ignite something inside me, and I find my voice.

"We are not enemies." There is no magic in this. No amplification of my voice, no thread of power in my words. Just plain speech, and hope. "None of you have directly harmed me or my coven. All of you, like me, like my coven, like my mates—" I feel Caspian and Caleb move up beside me, Caspian towering on my left, Caleb in wolf form sitting with his tongue lolling, relaxed and casual…seemingly, "you are all pawns in a larger game. You are warriors, yes, but you are more. You are men and women. You are mates, and sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters. You are human. And you are immortal. You are of the Blood."

Silence greets me. I let it expand, let it breathe.

"What do you fight for? Who do you fight for?" I pause again. "More importantly, who do you die for?" I cast my eyes upward. "Them? The Tribunal? The Council? A bunch of scared old ancients desperately clinging to the last vestiges of authority and power? What do they want? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why do they want me dead? And why, if I'm such a threat and they're so powerful and wise, do they not come for me themselves?"

I pause again, letting the questions set in.

"You call me WorldBreaker. You call me the Once-Mortal Queen. I claim neither title. I'm just me—Maeve Sparrow. Raised mortal. Vampire and fae—or what my mother called Vaer. I am you. Each of you has lived centuries more than I. You've seen the world change. You've felt the unfairness of the Treaty. You've watched age sickness claim friends and family. You've watched our kind die out because we cannot have children."

"I heard a rumor," a voice says, muffled by an Enforcer's full-face helmet. "I heard you were pregnant, but you miscarried."

Rage sears through me, pain seizes my heart, my soul, and I feel magic flare in my veins, threatening to spill out and claim their lives.

There has been too much death, and there will be more before this is over. Perhaps I can preserve even one life of this group of twenty immortals.

I clench my teeth and breathe, calming the volcanic rage at what was done to me.

Wolf snarls, feeling it.

Caspian…god, he doesn't know. Fuck. He doesn't know.

I grasp his hand. Look at him. Tears, stained red with blood and glimmering with microscopic hints of maya, trickle down my cheeks. "Cas, I'm…I'm sorry. I couldn't stop them. I tried." I turn to the cluster of warriors. "The rumor you heard was half true. I was pregnant."

I raise Caspian's and my hands.

"With his child. I, half-vampire, conceived a life. An immortal life." I pause and meet every pair of eyes. " With another immortal. What would that child have been? I don't know. Because that life was murdered by them !" I fling my other hand to the ceiling, and rage leaks out of me, sending a burst of power out of my hand and into the ceiling—The bare stone becomes liquid, an upside-down ocean of red-glowing molten stone, rippling and surging above us all.

I fight for calm, crushing Caspian's hand in mine, speaking through gritted teeth. "They bound me to a table and killed the life in my womb. They would have sterilized me so I could never conceive again. They tried. I vented, and in so doing killed…" I swallow hard. "A lot of people. Most of whom were innocent, just doing their jobs. Like you."

"You speak the truth?" It's the same voice, a female.

"Step forward, please," I say.

A figure, slender and short, wearing Enforcer's armor, shuffles out of the group, loosely gripping her shocksticks, which she has not activated.

"Will you remove your helmet and tell me your name?"

She hesitates. I can almost hear her swallowing her nerves. And then she slowly tugs her helmet off, revealing the sharp, almost too-perfect beauty of a fae female. She looks to be in her mid-thirties, which makes her older than Caspian but younger than Mom and Andreas. Her hair is red and curly, plastered to her forehead and cheeks and neck by sweat. Her eyes are blue and stunning.

"Amara," She whispers, her eyes searching me. "My name is Amara, my Queen." AH-mar-ah.

"Amara," I say. "Can you cast a glamour to compel one to speak the truth?"

She nods. "Of course."

I release Caspian's hand. Step forward toward her slowly. Extend my hands to her. "Cast it on me."

She licks her lips, looking over her shoulder at the others, but none of them so much as blink in her direction, much less offer support or encouragement. "My Queen?"

I scoff. "Maeve. My name is Maeve."

Alistair's voice echoes in my mind. Let them address you as they wish. If they see you as their Queen, let them.

I'm not a queen, Alistair.

To them, you are. And honestly, it's what they need.

I swallow hard. I get it. But it makes me feel like a pretender. A poser.

Alistair's only response is to wrap his mental presence around me, girding me with his calm and authoritative energy.

Amara licks her lips again. "You want me to…?"

"Glamour me to speak the truth. Try to sneak anything else in there, and I'll know."

She gazes at me with wide eyes, hands shaking. "I…I wouldn't, my…ma'am."

I take her hands in mine, and I feel her fear, her curiosity. I feel, as well, her power—thin and meager. But, as she begins casting the glamour, I see that she is extremely well-trained and highly skilled, using the meager amount of prana she has to great effect.

She weaves the glamour swiftly and smoothly, threading strands of magic together around her will and her intent, wrapping them around my throat and my voice box in particular, so it can only produce truth.

I feel it take hold. "Ask me a question to which I must lie."

"Are you male?"

"Y…" I begin, trying to lie. "Y…Yeh—" I shake my head. "No. I am female."

"Are you an owl?"

I snicker. "No."

"Are you mortal?"

"No."

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen. Twenty in March."

"Were you pregnant with the child of a vampire?"

"Yes."

Whispers rise in a wave.

"Was that child aborted against your will?"

"Yes."

"Upon whose orders?"

"The Tribunal. As far as I know, my grandfather, Elias Sparrow, was the lone dissenting vote."

"Are you the WorldBreaker?"

"The title has been given to me. I've been a prisoner here for the last two and a half months and have no direct knowledge of any events after the battle against Calliope and Tribunal forces in New York."

"Did you kill Calliope?"

"Yes."

"Are you the Once-Mortal Queen?"

"Again, the title has been given to me. I have only recently been made aware of the prophecy, and it does seem that I fit." I look past her. "I claim no authority over anyone. I ask for loyalty. Any who join me and my cause will be welcome. Any who stand against me and those fighting with me will die." I scan the ranks. "I did not ask for this fight. I did not ask for this responsibility. But neither will I shirk it. There must be change."

Amara keeps hold of my hands. "Can we mate with and bear children with immortals of a different race?"

"Yes. So far as I know, I am the first to do so willingly."

"Can we have true, bonded mates with immortals of another race?"

I shrug. "I assume so. I know very little of such things. When I bonded with Caspian, I didn't even know what a mate-bond was—I didn't even know I was immortal…and then Caleb?" I turn and look at Wolf, briefly meeting his amber-glowing eyes. "I didn't know he would be my mate until it happened. But now, I am mate-bonded to a vampire and a shifter. Which leads me to believe that yes, you can mate, marry, and bear children. Not with one of your own race, as history has made clear, and so far there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about that."

Amara lets go of my hands and the glamour dissolves—I feel it release me, feel my throat open up. "All I've ever wanted is a child," she whispers. "A mate. A family."

"Then look beyond fae, Amara. Look beyond the fear and the enmity you've been taught. I wasn't taught the bigotry you were. I didn't know that, as a vampire I was supposed to hate fae. As a fae, I didn't know I was supposed to hate vampires. As either, or both, or whatever, I didn't know I was supposed to hate shifters. I just knew that I was attracted to Caspian. Drawn to him. And then in love with him. And then I was bloodmated to him. With Caleb, I…he saved me when I was lost. Kept me sane when I was a prisoner here for no more reason than my existence—and because I threaten their hold on power." I stab my finger at the ceiling again.

"I don't hate anyone," Amara says. "I've worked with, lived with, trained with, and fought beside vampires and shifters for the last sixty years."

"Have you ever felt an attraction to one of them?"

She shifts her weight from foot to foot. "Yes." The syllable is a barely audible whisper.

"But you didn't act on it?"

A shake of her head. "No. I…I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"How could I tell him?" she asks, the words bursting out of her, too loud and too fast. "What was I supposed to say? 'Oh, by the way, Alex, I'm in love with you.' Yeah, that'd have gone over well with the squad." Her cheeks go bright red and she claps a hand over her mouth as she realizes what she just said. She turns and picks out a particular person, another enforcer. "Alex, I…"

The figure steps forward and removes his helmet—he's older than her by quite a bit, a massive shifter with hair as red as Amara's, burly, thick-bearded. He moves with the lumbering grace of a bear. "Amara, you don't know how many times I almost said something to you."

I barely resist the urge to clap my hands and jump up and down like a girly girl. Instead, I do my best to project authority and calm I in no way feel. "See? This is the future. Love is love. And yeah, maybe pure-blood lineage will fade in time as we mate and have kids that are like me, but that's better than going extinct, don't you think?" I clap my hands once. "My mate's pack is held prisoner, and they're dying of bond-sickness. I must free them. You've heard me speak under truth compulsion what has been done to me. There is nothing more I can say or do. You must choose for yourselves the path you tread. I, with my mates and my coven, are continuing onward to the cells. Stand against us, stand with us, or merely step aside."

I feel Mother's Spirit burning my gut, and I welcome it, let it move through me. A thin stream of prana swirls out of my outstretched hand and forms a glowing ball hovering above my hand.

I don't have a clue what it's supposed to do—I find myself wishing the things I do when under the influence of Mother's Spirit came with some kind of explanation or something.

Amara seems to know, however—without hesitation, she places her hand on the glowing ball; there's a brief flare of golden-white light, and then a stylized white sparrow emblazons itself on her armor, front and back, the outlines traced in gold, like the bond-mark tattoos on my skin.

Whispers rise again, and I see confusion and hesitation. Amara turns in place with military precision and takes three sharp steps backward into rank with my coven, behind Caleb, Caspian, and myself.

Some sort of identifying mark, then? Or something more binding? I'll have to ask Amara.

Alex, the big shifter, places his hand on the ball of light, receives the same mark on his armor, and he too steps back into rank behind me.

One by one, they all receive my mark and join the growing ranks behind me until only one warrior remains. A male vampire wearing the black jumpsuit of the security squad.

"My closest friend was a researcher in the medical lab," he says, voice shaking. "She…she was good. Kind. She wanted to help immortals through science. She didn't deserve to die."

I step forward and stop in front of him. "I'm sorry. I didn't want anyone innocent to die. Her death is on my conscience." I hold my palm steady, the glamour hovering above it. "Take the mark, or don't. If you choose not to, I understand. I will allow you to go your way unharmed. Stand against me…" I let the rest hang in the air, unsaid.

"You've killed so many already," he says. "I had friends on the squads sent after you. None of them came back."

"What was I supposed to do? They attacked me. In every instance, I begged them to leave me alone. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of this. I'm just doing the best I can in the situation, which is all anyone can do, I think."

He looks at the ball of light, and then at me. He's young, not much older than Caspian. Black hair cropped against his skull, whipcord lean, deep dark eyes. I feel his hunger.

"Just take her mark, Valerian," Alex says. "It's what Helen would have wanted and you know it. You heard what she said after Colorado. What they made her do." He points at me. "To her mother. Helen knew damn well that what we've been doing here is wrong. I know it. You know it. We all know it. She represents the first real chance at lasting, meaningful change for those of the Blood in…well, ever. What side of history do you want to be on, Valerian?"

Valerian lifts his hand and hesitates with it inches above the ball, scans the ranks now aligned against him, closes his eyes, and then presses his hand onto the ball, which seems to provide a sort of jelly-like resistance. The white Sparrow mark sears itself onto the front of his jumpsuit, and he looks down, tracing it with a finger.

He meets my eyes. Opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again with a soft click of his jaws. "For Helen."

I place my hand on his shoulder. "For Helen."

He marches past me then, and I turn to face the ranks of immortals, now some twenty-five strong.

"I will offer everyone we face the choice I have given you. I have enough blood on my conscience, As Valerian has pointed out. All I can do is what's in front of me. You follow me of your own free will. I will not ask you to fight your friends. But if you follow me, that is what we face—not all will take my mark."

I turn on my heel and forge forward into the depths of the mountain.